#Marcus Laurier#
I feel refreshed, alive, and full of vigor all because of this man named Vincent. I had felt it, the sour taste of depression and anxiety welling up inside my thoughts. I wasn't like this. This feeling hadn't come since the death of my mother whom I should not speak lightly of. My recent thoughts were in disarray, with every second passing a moment of confusion and contemplation on the purpose of my existence in the present. I thanked him last night after I awoke from day long trance. He was nice, but I felt his appearance was familiar to me.
After a long night's freezing rest in the cold, we set out in the early morn, trekking through the terrain while facing the sun which has yet to warm itself up before day. Vincent takes the lead while the four of us stay behind him.
"So, continuing from last night," I begin to say, "what was the Pareidolian Cult?"
Vincent continues to march through the thick snow, "it's a long story." He starts his monologue, "the cult's members are unknown, their leaders unknown, all we know is that they're determined to recollect a fragment of their god's power."
"God?" Wallace asks, "what a superficial thing."
"To be precise, it's not a god. It's a demon."
We all respond to his claim. Clara speaks up, "Demons are not real."
"Take it as a pinch of salt then," Vincent continues without being fazed, "their cult branched off a major cult worshipping someone called King Solomon. This cult recognises a spirit summon by Solomon and goes by the name of Dantalion. That's all I know."
Clara stumbles and I catch her before she falls. She thanked me and shuffled away, keeping an arm's length away from me. She's acting differently today…
Vincent slows down and crawls under a tree, gesturing us to come closer, "there's some kind of settlement there," he says as he points in the direction of the endless white forest.
"I don't see anything."
"I see it," Clara says after pausing for a while, "it's close and there are people."
"You have great eyesight." I compliment, "all I can see is snow."
"Thanks," she says while looking away from me.
…
Vincent gets up from his position, "we'll go see if they will let us stay the night."
"What do we give them though?" Isla adds. She's right, they wouldn't let us stay for free.
"We'll get there and then discuss that," Vincent says as he starts to walk again and we all trail behind, "it's better than sleeping out."
The village came into view, but you could hardly call it a village. Its buildings were made with the logs and showered with snow, its lights giving a welcoming embrace towards any newcomers that caught sight of it.
So where were the people?
Vincent shouts, awaiting a response from any townspeople present. No reply. He goes further into the house.
"No one's here…" Clara states.
Is that possible? The lights were still flickering with fire. I walked towards the well to investigate. The bucket was hung inside, hanging above a steady stream of spring water. Nothing here.
Out of nowhere, I hear Isla scream from the inside of a hut. What's the commotion?
I walk in to see Isla bent over, about to throw up with Wallace by her side and Clara's face, pale as ice.
A dead body. Hung with its feet millimetres above the ground like an ornament. The floor beneath was carved with letter and words that I could not understand. It was nauseating.
Too nauseating.
There wasn't much I could describe except that every aspect of that room was gruesome. Vincent bows down, kneels and clasps his hands together to pray.
Vincent whispers something to himself.
I listen on.
"The cult's doing," he says louder, "the Pareidolian Cult did this. Only they would be as crazy as to sacrifice a human in the name of an offering."
He gets up and starts investigating the other houses. Each and every room we ventured in hung corpses for display, repeating the same words. This cult, had already infiltrated into the school, given that Wallace and I were captured on school grounds. If this is what they did to these village people…
"Our school," Clara says, "we must go."
"We can't," Isla refutes, "we will die."
"But our classmates!"
"Did you see what they did?" Isla's voice rings throughout the empty village. Her voice stoic yet shaking. "Do you want to end up like them?" Clara looks at the pile of gore, expressing discomfort.
"What about our classmates? The townspeople?" Clara rebutted, "we can't just leave them."
"Clara, you!" Isla starts to gather mana but Wallace pulls her back, "Wallace!"
"Isla calm down," Wallace says calmly.
"How can you say that with a straight face? My best friend wants to go to a hellhole! And you're telling me to stop?" Wallace, unable to say anything to Isla's reasoning, shuts up.
These two are fighting. The two people who seemed close. The two people who were childhood friends. I muster the courage to walk between them.
"You too Marcus?" Isla's rage stacks.
I gulp. I'm not in the position to say anything right now.
I look behind me to see Clara taken aback. So why am I here? "Hear me out!" I say before I think of anything, "all of us should calm down. We all just witnessed something gruesome so let's take time to rest and we'll talk of this later!"
I grimace, bracing for impact but nothing comes. Isla shuts her eyes tight and clenches her fist before letting the mana release from her hands. "Fine."
I sighed in relief as Isla walks toward a chair to sit down. Vincent, silent through this argument, still praying in respects to the deceased. Maybe he would know something.
Clara holds my hand out of the blue, "thank you," she says with her trembling hands.
I respond, "I'm glad you both stopped," her face still retaining a mournful look, "there's no way we can reason with our current state of mind." She looks up and tears start to well up in her eyes. She starts crying and she falls into me, leaning in on my shoulder. They were aching from the night before, but I don't flinch, and I stay as still as a rock.
Her hands reach out to my chest, and she pulls on my shirt, her tears that colour a patch on my shirt get bigger and bigger as she continues weeping.
I… can't say anything right now.
Her tears start to go through my shirt.
"These people," she says while sobbing. Her words detached from one another, "what did they do wrong?" and she continues crying.
The Clara I knew was so headstrong, cool headed and talented. But now she was nothing more than a normal girl. Not the Child of light nor the Ace of our year, but Clara; a sixteen year old. She seemed so fragile and in this moment, I hug her back to comfort her.
"Nothing," I say. They did nothing wrong.
She continues weeping.